In 2014 Colorado dispensaries sold 150,000 pounds of cannabis and 5 million cannabis-infused edibles.

Denver’s cannabis industry alone generated $150 million in sales and created 15,000 jobs, most of which involved working in warehouses where marijuana is grown or in small dispensaries where cannabis is sold.

Oaksterdam University’s Cannabis Horticulture Seminars held in Las Vegas in March this year were fully booked.

Now Oaksterdam University is bringing its Basic and Advanced Cannabusiness Seminars to Las Vegas June 12-15, 2015. Participants will learn the skills needed to work in the cannabis industry as well as start and operate a cannabusiness. Some of the most qualified cannabis industry professionals will teach legal structures, civics, economics, advocacy, politics and history, science, methods of ingestion, legal implications and more. Participants will also have opportunities to network with each other and established cannabis experts.

In April, a bipartisan delegation of Nevada lawmakers visited their counterparts in Colorado, talking pot policy and touring businesses to see the recreational marijuana industry in action.

The Nevada Legislature decided to skip consideration of Initiative Petition 1, which proposes legalizing marijuana for adults 21 and over and taxing and regulating it similarly to alcohol.

Democratic Sen. Tick Segerblom said the trip to the Denver area, which included a stop at Colorado’s largest marijuana dispensary, was a positive experience for the group and a reminder that Nevada needed to get moving on similar regulation. “I think the people who went were impressed,” Segerblom said.

“Colorado is sort of the poster child for marijuana laws and marijuana legalization. But they’ve had some hiccups,” said Will Adler, executive director of the Nevada Medical Marijuana Association. “If someone else has already made those mistakes, why wouldn’t we learn from them now and do proper policy ahead of those disasters?”

Nevada has allowed for medical marijuana for years, but it only authorized dispensaries in 2013, after a group of lawmakers took a similar fact-finding trip to Arizona. Dispensaries and cultivation businesses are still in the process of setting up and are expected to start opening this summer, Adler said.

Republican Sen. Patricia Farley, who helped organize the trip, said her goal was to gather information that could shape two bills moving through the Legislature that deal with Nevada’s medical marijuana industry. “It’s actually looking at current laws and current structure and going back and fixing some of the legislation that has really prevented businesses from getting up off the ground,” Farley said.

The marijuana industry, as well as banking and other auxiliary industries that grow with it, could help diversify the state’s economy, she said.

“We’ve got gaming and alcohol. We might as well have pot,” Farley said. “It’s turning out to be, potentially, a very good emerging market for us.”